Discover how to effectively use soft deletes in Supabase to avoid losing data permanently. This guide covers every step you need, along with handy tips and smart shortcuts.
Managing soft deletes in Supabase, the open-source alternative to Firebase, is crucial for database upkeep. You have to be careful with queries to avoid losing records forever. Here's a guide on starting with soft deletes in Supabase. It explains what soft deletes are, how they're different from hard deletes, and why they're vital for keeping data intact. Also, it mentions the basic steps, methods, and special Supabase tools, like the Supabase client library for JavaScript, to handle soft deletions smoothly.
Alright, first things first. We need to add a new column to each of your database tables where you want to manage soft deletes. Let's call this column deleted_at, and it should be of the type "timestamp with time zone". This column will help us keep track of when a record was "deleted" without actually removing it. Think of it as a way to mark records as deleted without really getting rid of them.
Next up, let's talk about Row Level Security, or RLS for short. This is a feature from PostgreSQL, which is the database system that Supabase uses. RLS lets us manage security at the row level, not just at the table or database level.
With RLS, we can make sure that by default, we only get the "non-deleted" items from the database. You'll need to set up your RLS policy so it doesn't return rows where the deleted_at field is not null. Simple, right?
Now, let's cover our bases. Sometimes, the application might forget to set the deleted_at timestamp when deleting records. To handle this, we can use database triggers in Supabase.
Create a trigger for the delete operation on the table where you want to implement soft deletes. This trigger will basically turn the delete operation into an update operation, setting the current timestamp on the deleted_at field for the "deleted" row. Pretty neat, huh?
After setting up the database, we need to tweak your application logic to handle soft deletes. By default, when your app tries to delete records, it should update the deleted_at field instead of actually removing the record from the database.
When you're querying data from the table, make sure to only fetch records where deleted_at is null. This way, it looks like the deleted records aren't there at all.
One of the best parts about this soft delete method is that you can recover data if a deletion was a mistake. To "undelete" or recover deleted data, just set the deleted_at field back to null. This will make the record show up in your default queries again.
So, by handling soft deletes in Supabase, you can make your application more robust and have a safety net against accidental data deletions.
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